Newly released police interview footage has shed light on Russell Brand’s description of his “very promiscuous” past.
Published by the New York Post, the footage shows Brand being questioned by officers from the UK’s Metropolitan Police about earlier allegations of sexual misconduct.
“As I have said publicly many times and discussed at length in my writing, I lived a very promiscuous life in the past, something I have spent years openly condemning,” Brand said in one excerpt. “I have never participated in non-consensual sexual activity.”
The footage was released after the 51-year-old was convicted Nov. 5 on one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault. He was cleared of two further rape charges and one charge of attempted indecent assault. Six women made allegations against him, while Brand pleaded not guilty to every charge and denied all wrongdoing.
In the interviews, Brand also criticized the 2023 documentary Russell Brand: In Plain Sight, describing the sexual misconduct claims as “defamatory and fictitious.”
“Afterward, the media and police publicly encouraged other people to come forward with allegations,” Brand told investigators. “That led to further encounters being fabricated or remembered in a different way.”
“Right now, I don’t remember the complainants’ names or recall meeting them,” he continued. “But it is possible that I encountered them and that we had consensual sexual activity or physical contact.”
Brand further alleged that “media attacks” focusing on his sexual history had led consensual encounters to be “portrayed negatively decades later.”
He also discussed his sexual history while testifying during his four-week trial.
“Consent matters more than sex itself,” he told the court on Oct. 28, while admitting he had been wrong to use his celebrity status to “facilitate sexual access.”
“I accept that I have been an extremely determined and focused man,” Brand said. “When it came to women, which is central to this trial, I was persuasive, seductive, pleading and flirtatious. I devoted much of my life to behavior that now appears to me to be more than reckless philandering—it was foolishness.”
Brand was taken into custody following the verdict and is due to be sentenced Nov. 9. Under UK sentencing guidelines, a rape conviction can carry a prison term of four to 19 years, while the maximum possible sentence is life imprisonment.